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6 Reasons Why You Should Back up QuickBooks Online

11 Apr 2023
6 min read
Gopika
QuickBooks Online (QBO) is an accounting software that is popular among small and medium-sized businesses around the world. It is important to secure QBO against data loss, especially since the app does not have a recycle bin. Any deletion in QuickBooks Online- accidental or otherwise cannot be reversed, and organizations might end up losing vital information without a backup solution in place. 
Here are a few reasons why organizations should back up their QuickBooks Online account using third-party backup solutions:  
  • Limited native backup 

  • Deletions due to human errors 

  • Lack of a fault-tolerant export option 

  • Absence of a single-click restore 

  • Data corruption due to third-party app integrations 

  • Cloud outages 

1. Limited native backup: QuickBooks Online has a native backup & restore feature that is available with the advanced subscription plan. Although the solution can automatically back up QBO data, it cannot restore individual transactions, lists, or items. QBO’s native backup can only roll back the entire company to the last backup date. Administrators cannot preview or restore individual transactions, or lists. 

Here is the explanation offered by QuickBooks about the inability to restore a file to a previous point in time.

QuickBooks Online backup and restore tool warning
On the other hand, a third-party backup solution like SysCloud, allows organizations to preview and restore individual transactions, items, or lists from the backup archives. Administrators can restore to a specific point-in-time, at an org-level, or by selecting specific transactions. 

2. Accidental deletions: Human error is unavoidable, but sometimes it can cost organizations valuable accounting data because there is no “undo” button in QBO. According to QuickBooks, any deleted transaction, list, or item on QuickBooks Online cannot be retrieved. Here are screenshots of a discussion on the QBO community site-

QuickBooks Online deleted data

QuickBooks Online deleted data

QuickBooks Online lack of restore option
Pro tip

Pro tip: SysCloud backup for QuickBooks Online automatically backs up the company’s accounting data and allows organizations to restore it whenever needed. 

3. Lack of a fault-tolerant export option: Although QBO has a native export feature, it is limited to two formats- Excel and PDF. To top that off, any incomplete export job needs to be restarted manually. 

A backup solution like SysCloud allows organizations to export QBO transactions, lists, reports, tax rates, and exchange rates as .csv files, and attachables in their original format. SysCloud also automatically restarts any incomplete export jobs.  
 

4. Absence of a single-click restore: QBO allows organizations to import data into the application. However, administrators might have to spend hours to find the relevant data to be imported. Any incomplete import jobs need to be restarted manually.  

Backing up QBO with SysCloud backup allows organizations to search for and restore deleted transactions, lists, items, or attachables with the click of a button.  It also detects any incomplete restore jobs, resolves, and restarts them automatically. 
 

5. Data corruption due to third-party app Integrations: Integrating third-party applications to QuickBooks online may help organizations save time and automate several tasks. However, app integrations have the potential to backfire by corrupting important files on the cloud or cause data loss due to sync-errors. To avoid losing business data, it is important to have a backup solution like SysCloud in place before integrating third-party applications with QuickBooks Online.  

Here is a screenshot of a warning on Chargebee support page cautioning users about potential sync-errors and data mapping issues with QuickBooks Online-Chargebee integration. 

QuickBooks Online third-party application intergration error

6. Cloud outages: Although cloud storage allows better data accessibility, no cloud service can guarantee 100% uptime. QuickBooks is no exception- and an outage can leave an organization and its employees without access to important business information stored in the application. For instance, QBO users were unable to set up payroll on May 6th, 2022- here is a screenshot of the QBO status page stating the same. 

QuickBooks Online cloud outage
Backup solutions like SysCloud for QuickBooks Online can ensure that organizations have access to a second copy of the data at any time- including outages.

With important business information stored in the application and no way to retain deleted data, it is important to have a backup strategy in place for QuickBooks Online. Click here to learn more about SysCloud backup for QuickBooks Online. 

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Learn how to export QuickBooks Online transactions and lists using native export options & third-party tools, and why it should not be used as a backup alternative.

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How to Recover Deleted QuickBooks Online data

Find out how to recover deleted QuickBooks transactions and lists using the native backup tool, export option, and a third-party backup solution.

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In this article

  • 6 reasons why you should back up QuickBooks Online

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